Category: Christmas

Advent activity #21

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music, Reasons to be cheerful

I was struggling a bit this morning, what with the relentlessly doomy tone of the news and the feeling that while it’s OK to feel blue in general, the last week before Christmas has always been my happiest time, even when I was generally doing badly, and feeling blue this particular week was NOT FAIR.

And as I was sitting feeling sorry for myself the doorbell rang and it was a neighbour whom I last saw when he was in the middle of a combined mental health and housing crisis and I almost didn’t recognise him, not just because he’d had a shave and a haircut for the first time since I’ve known him but because I’ve never seen him outside his front door before, his agoraphobia having prevented it for just over six years. I got to know him during lockdown #1 because I started shopping for him, so he had come round not just to drop off a Christmas card and a bunch of flowers, but to ask me whether I needed anything from the shops, which he was so pleased to be able to do that I conjured up a need for lemons just to be able to join in. (I always need lemons, more or less.)

So now I am feeling buoyed and every time I look at the flowers I smile, which is excellent timing because today’s task is to MAKE PRESENTS FOR MUM AND DAD, which I am going to suggest you interpret as an instruction to give something – a cup of tea, a phonecall, the gift of having hung out the laundry before they remember to do it – to someone important, because it might make them smile like D’s visit has me.

And if you need a smile yourself, here’s Doris Day:

Advent activity #20

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Films, Music, Theatre

Today’s activity is one we had coincidentally already planned to do anyway, and it is WATCH CHRISTMASSY FILMS. We are saving Daiteiden no yoru ni and It’s A Wonderful Life for the 24th because that is when they are both set, so today we will be choosing between Last Christmas, which was fairly universally panned last year but which seems likely to hit about the right sort of note for 2020; Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey which you will find on Netflix and two Agatha Christies, because Agatha Christies are always Christmassy: the never-bettered 1980 Angela Lansbury/Elizabeth Taylor version of The Mirror Crack’d (look at that cast!) and the 1945 adaptation of And Then There Were None which I have never seen but which will certainly be the spookiest of all, and so should be saved for last.

We might also watch Bernard and the Genie, which is what happens when Richard Curtis makes a good Christmas film instead of a godawful one. It’s hard to find, but some thoughtful soul has posted the whole thing on YouTube.

We won’t be watching Hamilton because along with Spike Lee/David Byrne’s American Utopia we’ve already watched it too many times during lockdown, but I will watch, and so should you, this video of Leslie Odom Jr, aka Aaron Burr, and his gorgeous version of O Holy Night.

Advent activity #19

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Films, Music

This is late because I accidentally spent most of the day asleep – which is what happens when you are still post-viral but pretending not to be during the working week in order to seem competent (this is just my latest trick in this line). This means that as I write this Boris Johnson has already cancelled Christmas, making it a slightly harder ask to bring comfort and joy, but Edie comes to the rescue here because today’s task is to EAT MINCE PIES, and if there’s one thing we can all agree helps, it’s edible Christmas treats. I don’t have mince pies because I’m fussily making them myself even though there’s only the two of us here, but I have just eaten half a bag of chocolate coins, which I think counts, and for supper we are having roast chicken with pigs in blankets, and I suggest you do the same, or whatever version of it perks you up the soonest.

It also gives me an excuse to include the lyrics as well as the video for today’s song, because they are perfect for today:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away

Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were near to us
Will be dear to us once more

Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

Advent activity #18

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Food, Music

Some of us may have already started on today’s job, but in case you haven’t, this is your official dispensation to EAT LOTS OF CANDY, which also means I finally get to share with you the advent calendar that my dad has made for my mum this year, using the set of drawers that for the other eleven months of the year is employed as a storage space for screws, categorised by size and type. (Everyone’s dad has or had one of those, right?)

I am not keen enough on chocolate to need or want a chocolate advent calendar, but I have been enjoying my daily piece of cheese; never more than yesterday, when I had a piece of Mexican cheese studded with jalapeño pieces that made my eyes water in a good way. I should like to update you on today’s species of cheese, but I haven’t opened it yet and Alciona the cleaner is downstairs which means I am banned from going down. Sorry.

Instead you’ll have to make do with Perry Como, who if you listen carefully is singing here about candy canes, which makes him the perfect accompaniment to today’s gastronomic-indulgence-of-your-choice.

Advent activity #17

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

Today is another BREAK day and coincidentally it’s also another birthday, so I got birthday girl Georgia to pick today’s song, and since as a generous and loving parent she recently spent two hours – in the evening! – at a virtual school Christmas concert I thought she would definitely enjoy this crowdsourced rendition. I miss carol concerts and school plays, don’t you? A Zoom nativity is not the same thing at all, however hard it tries, especially in a year when for the first time ever a Morgan has been given a STARRING ROLE, as Joseph.

Best bit of this: the DUM-DUM-DUM at 1:46 (which is repeated at the very end, which is how all Christmas carols and probably all songs should end), and the key change right after it.

Advent activity #16

On By Laura MorganIn Arts, Christmas, Music

If you didn’t get a chance to MAKE UP NICE STORIES yesterday, don’t worry because today you get to DRAW NICE PICTURES. Or, if you’re not in the mood for that, you can instead look at nice pictures from three of my favourite Twitter art accounts:

Tiggy Chadwick draws and paints to order, as well as her own fabulous stuff, and has an Etsy shop here

Patrick Onyekwere draws stunning portraits in biro

My old university mucker Ella Johnston is a magpie, creating art inspired by everything from birds to rice paper (she is the only artist whose work features three separate times on my walls), and has a whole website here which you should also visit on your afternoon coffee break.

The closest I have come today to making a nice picture is spilling some pink nail polish on my leggings, resulting in an interesting tie-dye effect, but again, if you are six or thereabouts I think you should go right ahead and make a nice picture of your own.

I can’t think of a song which is even slightly related to making pictures, but I am Christmas Zooming with my schoolfriends this evening even though we have all admitted to being slightly too tired and stressed for it. So to cheer them, me and you up, here’s Mariah.

Advent activity #15

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

It’s ten days till Christmas! And today’s job is to MAKE UP NICE STORIES. I have done nearly that by going out and buying two actual books at lunchtime. Does that count? I think it does. I have also been reading an actual book; My Sister The Serial Killer which is not a nice story exactly, but it’s good. My Christmas Covid brain doesn’t have the energy to make up a nice story of my own, but I think if I were six I would definitely be really good at it.

There are, of course, lots of Christmas songs which tell nice stories so picking one for today was tough, even though some of the best (Last Christmas, A Winter’s Tale, this version of Tom Waits’ Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis) were ruled out because they are too sad. I’ve plumped instead for The Waitresses with Christmas Wrapping on the basis that we can, and should, all dance to it.

Advent activity #14

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

Now that you’ve decorated your tree, it’s time to PUT PRESENTS UNDER THE TREE. There are currently two presents under our tree, which since they came in the post I think we have to wait and open on the day. What with one thing and another quite a lot of our presents this year either aren’t physical things at all or are being posted directly to their recipients (as an extended family we are skipping the three-households-mixing relaxation because we have decided we’d rather not kill each other), but I intend to make sure we have at least a few more there before bedtime.

Most Christmas traditions can be traced back to pre-Christian rituals but I think that present-giving starts with the Magi, giving us the perfect excuse to revisit the King’s College rendition of We Three Kings, which sticks with the original arrangement whereby each king is sung by a different soloist. I like the whole carol, but the unexpectedly sad and sinister lyrics of Melchior’s “Myrrh” verse are the best bit of all, especially in this version, although they do have to compete with a dazzling final note.

Advent activity #13

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

Stand down, there is no activity today because the 13th is officially designated another BREAK day. And honestly, by mid-December when it’s wet outside and work hasn’t let up at all yet and you’re still post-Covid and you walked 15,000 steps yesterday and had two (two!) social engagements, one of which took place IN REAL LIFE, I think a break is well-earned. The furthest I plan to go today is to the shop for some milk, and the only activity I will be taking part in is hanging out the laundry, and I’m only doing that because in an ill-advised surge of early morning energy I decided to do the laundry in the first place, a decision I now firmly regret.

Still, at least I can listen to Christmas music while I hang out the laundry, and since its Sunday and I’ve nothing else to do I’m sharing this whole playlist made by my brother, who has carefully selected the best possible versions of all the best possible carols. It’s really a hanging-things-on-the-tree playlist, but I’m optimistic it will work just as well as a hanging-things-on-the-clothes-horse playlist.

If you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing you can just listen to my favourite, which today is the haunting Bethlehem Down as sung by the choir of Queen’s College, Oxford:

Advent activity #12

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

Naturally once you’ve bought your tree, the next job is to DECORATE TREE. Ours has been up for nearly a week but I’ve saved the pictures for today, in case you need some inspiration. The decorations are the usual accumulation of several years’ worth of buying, borrowing and stealing, but the fairy on the top is the work of my own fair hands exactly forty-two years ago. I think you’ll agree I showed a promising talent even then:

Since writing about “Deck the Halls” yesterday I have had it as an earworm, and since today is all about putting up decorations it seems an appropriate choice. As I know you know, the tune is from the Welsh “Nos Galan” which is a new year’s song, so in honour of its origins here is a gorgeous version by the Treorchy Male Voice Choir.